The Best Day

I don't agree. I don't think it was the best day of my life by any stretch of my imagination. This image, according to me, is just another way of glorifying the whole birthing process. I have delivered two babies. Both the days were MESSY, to say the least. Normal or C-section - it doesn't matter. You are a MESS.  

Read on to get a sneak verbal preview of what happens on that day. 

Doctors (yes, plural) stick their fingers into you, nurses disrobe you, one staff puts a bed pan under you (in case of normal delivery) and asks you to relieve yourself so that you don't shit during the delivery (the truth is, some still do!!), you can feel your stomach and large intestines emptying into that pan and then the staff takes that pan in front of you into the toilet and flushes it and you almost die of shame (if it's your first delivery), another staff comes and "cleans" you. Add to that, your mad-woman like screams during the contractions and unbearable hunger, your body being paraded and handled most unceremoniously and you cannot even protest .... I could go on. 

Point is - it is NOT a pretty sight. 

In India, most hospitals do not allow the husbands into the labor rooms. I don't think it is a good thing. I feel husbands should be allowed to see their wives in their WORST possible avatar and see if they still love her as much.  Indian husbands have no idea what their wives go through, on the D-day, to give them their DNA, in flesh and blood, angelic and cherubic,  wrapped beautifully in softness of cloth and skin.  

And those videos that show the baby and the mother bonding - well, with both my babies (I delivered them in the same hospital, 12 years apart), the nurses took them away almost immediately to be weighed and cleaned and a thousand other things to be done like noting the time of birth etc. The bonding and the skin-to-skin contact that pregnancy websites emphasize so much on happened a few hours later in my case. 

Face Presentation

Brow Presentation or Face Presentation (FP).   
Saw this word for the first time on my hospital discharge summary report. 

No matter how much you read on the topics of pregnancy and birth when you are pregnant, there's always something you miss. Who knew my baby would choose to come into the world through an FP? 

Statistics say only one out of 300 deliveries are FPs.  Normally, a baby is born head first. The chin is bent towards the chest. But in an FP, the chin is stretched, the neck is extended backwards, as if the baby is looking up. 

They say if an FP is mismanaged, there is the possibility of birth defects and skull trauma. 

Saw this video on FP while writing this post. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElhTjSukSeU

A million thanks to God and the doctors for ensuring my baby was delivered safely, that she was fine and did not suffer any pain/swelling of face or any other trauma. Today, the more I read about FP and watch images or videos related to it, the more grateful I am for my baby's safe delivery. My C-section delivery apprehensions be damned! I have a healthy baby in my hands. That's what matters. 

But on the day of the delivery and post that, I was really upset. I kept asking myself, and Sathya - why did our baby choose to come this way?  Why couldn't she have not flexed her neck muscles? Why couldn't she have 'looked down', tucked her chin into her chest and come out like hundreds of other babies? I could have easily had a normal delivery. We could have saved money and post-delivery recovery time spent in the hospital. I had no complications, whatsoever, during my entire pregnancy period nor on the day of the delivery. No pain or contractions or bleeding or high BP. Not even water discharge. Just the news that the baby will exit the womb today. So did the baby look up on the day of the delivery or at the moment of her entry into the world? When did she actually flex her neck? It certainly did not show up in any of the scan reports or during the weekly physical examinations. 

I have decided to take solace in the words of the operating doctor who said, "Nim magu thale yetti, aakasha nodkond bandide." (Your baby has held her head high and is coming, looking up at the sky.)

The Delivery Day

The operation was over. 

I was put on a stretcher to be moved into the ward. 

I lay there waiting to see the baby. Just then, for a fleeting moment, one of the doors to the labor room  opened and I saw Sathya and Tanvi outside. They were waiting to see us. When I saw them, the first thing that came to my mind was, "My world." 

Exactly those words! They really are my entire world. They are everything. They are all I have. And I have a lot. That image of them standing there, Tanvi waving at me, Sathya anxious to know if I was okay...that image is imprinted in my mind's eye. In that moment, I knew I had all I wanted - with or without the new baby. I was fulfilled, complete. The baby was a bonus!

I hadn't seen the baby yet and asked a nurse for her. They brought her. I couldn't get up. But I held her. Momentarily! So much for all those viral videos you see online of mothers weeping, kissing, clicking pics with newborn, baby smooching the mother's face and so on and so forth. Didn't happen. The nurse took her out to show her to Sathya and Tan.

I wondered if they were upset that it wasn't a boy. I felt sad for them. Tan had said she wanted a brother and Satty wanted a son he could play cricket with and teach bike riding to. I had disappointed them. I felt sorry. As for me, I was so happy that she was healthy and perfectly fine. That was all that mattered. Especially after the fear of Down's Syndrome. 

I can't believe I am saying this but on hindsight, I think Dr. Nishchitha was right. I had the experience of both cesarean and normal delivery. It opened my eyes. I was very skeptical of C-section deliveries. I used to think it was a way God was punishing the women for something. I thought it was a shortcut some women took to avoid the pain and have it easy. I thought if someone had to go for cesarean, it is because they were not healthy. Healthy women were blessed by God and had normal deliveries. I was a complete idiot. I was a moron, an asshole. How could I think like that? I had no idea of the pain the surgery involved. But after I went through it because my baby was born through Brow Presentation (face is the first thing at the opening of the birth canal, not head) and I had no option but to say yes to a surgery, I realized that I was SO wrong. 

In the case of a normal delivery, the pain is during the labor- it could be for a couple of hours to sometimes a day. In the case of a C section, even though the baby is out in a couple of minutes and there is no pain that the mother feels at THAT moment, the pain of the stitches and the back pain and the slow healing and the painful recovery is a long process. In one case, you suffer pain for a few hours but rest of your life, you will be fine. As in the case of Tanvi's delivery. In another case, you don't suffer pain in the beginning but suffer it throughout your life. Or at least, that's what people tell you about the lifelong pain. 

The image on the right.
I don't know about doing it all over again. I wouldn't! 

People glorify pregnancy and motherhood. I can totally understand and empathize if a woman would rather adopt than go through all this.  

Breast-Feeding

I remember the day I delivered Tanvi. The water had broken around 10 a.m in the morning and by 12 I had been admitted. By 2 the contractions started and by 4 my baby was in my hands. 

No wait, she wasn’t. 

Because after the delivery, I had fallen asleep. Or I fell unconscious. Or the doc had put me to sleep with painkillers. I don’t know exactly. All I can recollect now is that they had moved me, from the delivery area to an adjacent area, to be shifted to a ward as soon as it was available. All wards were full that day.

There really are a lot of Gemini kids in the world. I read somewhere that Gemini is the most common zodiac and Aquarius is the rarest. There are far too many Geminis in this world and far few Aquarians. September must be a great month for conception and May the worst month. Something to do with the cooler/warmer weather in those months? 

Anyways, I remember seeing, in my drowsy state and droopy eyes, the nurse showing the baby to Sathya. And then, my eyes closed. 

When I woke up, I was in a ward with tiny Tanvi next to me - all of  2.92 kg. 

It was a common ward, the only one available, so there were 2-3 other mothers as well. A nurse asked me if I had fed the baby. I had not. I didn’t know I had to. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was afraid she would shout at me. I hadn’t even lifted my baby in my arms yet. I was completely drained of energy. I had apparently passed out for a good 3-4 hours and the baby hadn’t had anything yet. So I slowly raised myself on the bed, took the baby and... sat there. I didn't know what to do next. 

Who gets a lesson in feeding? It is like sex. You don’t know it until you do it. It is instinct, by and large. Or if your mother or mother-in-law is next to you, she guides you. My great mother-in-law was too busy handling matters of World Peace to be beside me. She had not turned up at all, even that late in the day, to see her grandchild. So, well, I too followed my instinct. And boy, was Tanvi hungry!!! 

That first moment when you feed your baby is a moment a woman will never forget in her life. That is when the two of you "connect" and "bond" and watching those tiny lips on your bosom, you finally feel that yes, it was all worth it. The struggles of the nine months, the pain of labor, the delivery trauma - all worth it. I know people say, the moment immediately after delivery, is the greatest - the moment when you see your baby first time. But for me, that moment was fleeting. The doc was busy stitching me up, giving instructions to 'hold up' and finishing up the rest of the post-delivery tasks. The baby was not given to be held because it had to be washed and not laid next to me because I had passed out. So what they show you in the movies - doesn't always work that way.

After I had fed her on one side, I thought it’s not fair to feed only one side. I must be impartial (typical teacher talk) and feed both. Someone later told me that yeah that is the right way to do it; otherwise the breast swells and hurts like hell because the milk coagulates. Always feed both sides.

New mothers truly learn a lot on the job, don't they! There is no induction training or trial sessions or demos. At least back then, I didn’t attend any classes or watch any YouTube videos. Now, thanks to smart phones and internet, everything, every information is available on your fingertips. And I have watched many a video and read countless pregnancy related articles.

As for breast-feeding being equivalent to running 8 kms (check the first pic) , it must be true. I breast-fed Tanvi till she was THREE years old. I fed her everywhere - theater, cinema hall, bus-station and on everything - on a bus, car, bike, auto !! I now believe it was one of the reasons I lost all the pregnancy weight (13 kilos) really quickly and that too without any exercise or any fitness regime. 

Pregnancy Memes

Here are some memes I found really funny all related to pregnancy or parenthood, of course.

This one is so so true! I remember, with Tan, not even being able to go pee because she would be fast asleep, wanting to kill the person that rang the doorbell and when I switched off the doorbell, they would keep knocking at the door and no escape from THAT

Haha! This one....I used to get very angry at his mother and relatives and his side of the visitors remarking that the baby looks exactly like him. 

I actually peeked first at Tanvi's nose when she was first shown to me by the doctors immediately after the delivery. I wanted her to have Sathya's nose and my hair. I had prayed for it!! Her nose is not as great as Satty's but not as bad as mine either. She did get my hair and not Sathya's, thank God for that. 

Oops! This never happened with Tan but well, never say never! The new one just might!!

Get the baby out of me ....hehe! Will get there soon enough!